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Converting my wife from Windows to Mac is about to begin

Last Saturday my wife and I went to our local Apple store with the intent of buying her a new MacBook and taking advantage of the educational offer they had; buy a qualifying Mac and get up to a $299 iPod free. My hope was that we would be able to get one of the new iPods but instead they told us we could only get either an older 8GB iPod Touch or a previous generation Nano. We decided to pass this up and simply wait a little longer since Allison's birthday isn't until the end of the month.

I thought about holding off until the next generation MacBooks are released (highly likely they will be next month) but came to the conclusion that it was better to simply get her a new machine right now instead of waiting. I want to have the machine in-house and set up for her so that she has it for her birthday.

I've had good luck with Apple Refurbished systems—my Mac Pro being one of them—so I decided to go that route. Since her needs are really minimal and she likes both of my daughter's MacBooks I went with the least expensive MacBook I could find in the refurbished deals section:

White MacBook2.16 GHz Core Duo1GB Memory120GB HD8X Superdrive

While a pretty entry level machine it's more than powerful enough to handle the basic web surfing, e-mail and word processing that Allison does. The $949 price was great too. I also picked up a refurbished 500GB Time Capsule for her at $249 and added in Apple Care to round it all out. The way I see it the Time Capsule should be just what she needs to keep Time Machine working for her behind the scenes.

On my short list to pick up for her are a Bluetooth mouse and some additional RAM. Given the low price of memory I'll likely overbuy there and go with 4GB since there is no such thing as too much RAM, especially with Firefox leaking like crazy.

The other challenge will be to see if she wants to use Microsoft Office or iWork. I personally bought iWork and moved to that after my trial of Microsoft Office left me feeling... meh. Pages is a much less complex product and I may try to get her to give that a shot instead of Word.

So the countdown to converting my wife from Windows to Mac is on. The machine is due early next week and I'll be giving it to her that weekend. Hopefully before then I can get all of her files on the machine and set it all up for her so that she can just jump right in and start using it.

A little help with a nameOne thing I could use help with; I'll need to name the machine. She's a high school teacher now but is also an accomplished attorney that served as a child advocate for many years. For her sake I want to avoid the Star Wars themes I've used for names since she's apparently allergic to science fiction.

You'd better wait for the new machines. You're going to kick yourself afterward if you don't.Nobody ever thinks "I wish I'd gone ahead and bought the old machine" once the new ones arrive.. especially from Apple.

Just curious, did you check out MacMall before ordering the refurb machine from Apple? Sometimes MacMall's deals are exceptionally good and you can get a new machine for $75 - $100 less than Apple wants. Plus, as they don't have a retail presence, at least in my State, you get to avoid paying sales tax.

As for a name, what subject does your wife teach? You might be able to find inspiration there. Or, you can the flattery route and just call the machine MILF or TILF. Unless, of course, that isn't something either of you would find cute or humorous.

Another idea would be to go really old school and name the machine Plato, or Aristotle. You could also go with Argonaut, or something else out of Greek/Roman mythology.

I really like the latin idea, it's got a nice tie in there. She's a history / government teacher so that plays into it as well.

@Anon: on waiting and buying the new model, I don't want to wait around until mid-October to get her birthday present and what she has now is dying pretty rapidly. If it was for me I likely would have waited.

@Devburke: I was waiting for someone to figure that one out. A true sign of love is when your wife decides to subject herself to that name. Alllison would be rather amusing, though I also like Gerard's idea.

@American Fairy Tales: thanks for the tip on MacMall.com. I just checked there and they don't really have anything too close to the price I paid - the machines that looked closest in price had the Combo Drive, not Super Drive, which she will need to burn DVDs.

I first named a Mac when I was studying Shakespeare in school. Ever since then I've named computers after Shakespearian characters and works, like Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius, and Tempest. I then pick another related character or word to name the hard drive, like Ophelia, Banquo, Caesar, and Prospero (I don't like making the network name the same as the HD name, or I get confused).

Ouch, *bad* time to be buying an Apple laptop, with new models imminent. Even if the new models don't offer anything you can't live without, at the very least you'd get a much better deal on the current models.

And if the new models *are* a significantly better redesign, your wife will be unhappy to have the outdated model.

Open office 3 is a M$ office alternative that might be easier than Pages if she has to deal with .doc and .docx with the school. In Pages you have to import and export to the formats instead of just working with them as is. Bean is simple and fast for .doc also, if basic needs are all you need.

@Welles: I like the tiny receiver on that mouse - would be even better if it was just Bluetooth though. Thanks for the link. While I hate the drivers that Logitech has forced on the Mac community I really like the hardware they produce and it is my preferred mouse. My wife has small hands so I may see if the Microsoft Bluetooth Laptop Mouse I tried out a few months ago (but gave up on) will be a good fit for her.

@Chris: She really is not technically inclined at all - computers are tools to her and she views them in a very impersonal way. My hope is that she gets into this Mac like she has her iPhone and starts to use it as more than an e-mail / web browsing / word processing device. If that does happen then round about Christmas I'll be upgrading her to a newer MacBook and pushing this MacBook down to my son, the last one in the house still on a PC. All part of the plan ;-)

@William: thanks for the reminder on Open Office. I should let her try that out and see if it works for what she needs. She has lots of .DOC and a few .docx files to deal with and that's the standard medium at her school. She also deals with PowerPoint PPT files as well so I have to factor that in.

@Darren: I really like Cicero, very appropriate. That's in the lead now for me.

I use the Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard. It isn't bluetooth, but that actually helps in that I can leave bluetooth turned off to save power when I've gone mobile. It also makes it easy to swap it between computers by just moving the receiver dongle. I did that for a while when using the work laptop on the same desk as the personal laptop. While "at work" I just plugged it into the work laptop.

The other reason I got the Logitech wireless over Apple's is the Logitech has a numeric keypad. I do some accounting duties which makes having the number pad pretty much required. That may be important for her attorney needs, too.

I have a Time Capsule, and it is just perfect for my backups. The disk is a little loud when it is running, though. It isn't spinning-whine loud but static-noise when writing noise. I can always tell when Time Machine is going to run when I hear the Time Capsule disk start up. I also use it to share my music files to my work laptop in my office. I don't use iTunes on my windows laptop, so it doesn't interfere with the files there. I just use it as a read-only network shared drive for the music files. I back them up separately from Time Machine so I can get to them.

I believe that currently there is a promotion going on at the Apple stores for a $100 rebate on select printers (making a $99 printer free!); this rebate was not part of the summer educational promotion. You may want to investigate the printer promotion deadline and take that into your buying plans.

@qka: Thanks for the heads up on the printer promotion. I indeed saw that but we're full up on printers here with a good mix of multi-function black laser, color laser and injet photo printers.

I've noticed that printers are now going for ridiculously low prices; keep in mind the cost of replacement cartridges for them. That's often where the vendor makes up the promotional price. I've also noticed that every printer I've bought recently had a "micro" sized cartridge that only has a fraction of the capacity of standard replacement cartridges—usually on the order of 50% of what a standard replacement cartridge contains. They do this so you will have to go out and buy a much higher margin replacement sooner rather than later.

@Keleko: I would really like to get her comfortable with the keyboard that's built into the MacBook. She doesn't use the numeric keyboard on her laptop right now so I don't think that will be a factor. She loves the idea of portability and I'm trying to get this machine set up so that she simply pops the magnetic power cord and grabs the machine. We'll see how that works out.

I know you're set on bluetooth for a mouse/keyboard, and I have the same deal in the form of a Mighty Mouse and Apple bluetooth wireless keyboard, but keep in mind this caveat: Bluetooth doesn't have a whole lot of bandwidth apparently. I know this because I use it to talk to my phone, and when it's transferring pictures, contacts, ringtones etc. over bluetooth I gotta remember to shut off my mouse and keyboard because during that time they become quite unusable and the transfer slows down even more than it would be otherwise.

But hey, it's not a big deal since my Macbook has that brilliant built-in trackpad and it's own keyboard. Plus it beats buying a cable for my phone.

Good luck with your wife's conversion. It didn't take a whole lot to get my wife converted over. She's happy as can be with her sexy black Macbook that she's happy to use with just it's own screen, keyboard, trackpad, and portability. Me, I have to hang a 23" external LCD, a firewire external drive, a USB external drive, a USB hub with printer, scanner, Wacom, camera, media reader, external speakers and the bluetooth mouse/keyboard off my Macbook!

My close friend didn't want to wait when I warned him new iBooks were due. He jumped in and bought one anyway. A G4 iBook. A couple of weeks later the Intel MacBook arrived, was twice as fast and cost less. He was sick about it, The old saw, anything worth having is worth waiting for certainly applied there.

I always enjoy reading your blog. You post something at 10:00AM and by 9:04PM you have 27 comments. I read in your blog switching to iWork from Office. I just bought my copy of iWork yesterday for my birthday. I did have a question for you did you go with .MAC/mobileMe?

For a name I always string things together so my suggestion would be MOMWIFETEACHERLAWYER.

@WalkerJ: Thanks for the feedback on the Bluetooth interference issue - I hadn't thought of that. Welles has me thinking of the Logitech for her; since that USB receiver is so small that may be the way to go.

Your lift-off analogy is great; I only have a couple of things plugged into my MacBook Pro but it feels like that when I need to pull it as well. Lately I've just been using the track pad to keep it more mobile.

@Steve: Husband points; I like it. The first thing I thought of with that name was Calista Flockhart though. My wife would probably look at me and wonder why I did that. "Because it's Greek for Most Beautiful!". Allison: "So she's the most beautiful person to you, is she?!?"

I don't like where that one might go.

@Gerry: I do have a spare wide screen monitor that I may hook her up with, though she seemed to be pretty happy with the 13" when she was trying out our daughter's MacBook.

@Max: I didn't go with Mobile Me. Even though we're flush with Macs and iPhones now I don't see the value based on the cost. Glad you like reading the blog! I'm not writing as often as I used to but it's still fun to jump into it, especially if it helps me keep my mind off the stock market.

@Nicholas: My wife is currently running an older, unpatched version of Wife 1.4. While the command set is essentially the same as newer versions there are quite a few quirky things that I've had to work through. In particular I'm hoping that after this upgrade her "Let's Redecorate the Bedroom" subsystem will not fire up as often as it does now. Only time will tell.

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